Bloody Sunday

Book 3: Luke Jensen Bounty Hunter

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Westerns; Action & Adventure; Historical Thrillers

Synopsis

The Greatest Western Writer of Our Time With his epic novels of the Jensen family, William W. Johnstone has captured the pioneer spirit of America. Now he reveals the untold story of Smoke Jensen's long-lost brother Luke, thought to have been killed in the fiercest war in our nation's history. Smoke's Brother Luke: The Jensen Legend Continues. . . The last days of the Civil War. With Richmond under siege, Confederate soldier Luke Jensen is assigned the task of smuggling gold out of the city before the Yankees get their hands on it--when he is ambushed and robbed by four deserters, shot in the back, and left for dead. Taken in by a Georgia farmer and his beautiful daughter, Luke is nursed back to health. Though crippled, he hopes to reunite with his long-lost brother Smoke, but a growing romance keeps him on the farm. Then fate takes a tragic turn. Ruthless carpetbaggers arrive and--in a storm of bullets and bloodshed--Luke is forced to strike out on his own. Searching for a new life. Hunting down the baddest of the bad. . .to become the greatest bounty hunter who ever lived. This is the sprawling saga of one fearless man who would stop at nothing to bring outlaws to justice--and freedom to America. . .

Release date: July 1, 2014

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

Some people said that a bullet going close past a man’s ear sounded like a hornet, but Luke Jensen knew better than that because he had heard plenty of them.

What it sounded like was a bullet coming too blasted close to blowing his brains out.

He kicked his feet free of the stirrups and left the saddle in a dive that landed him on the hard ground with a jolt he felt all through his body. He was getting too old for this, he thought as he rolled behind a rock barely big enough to give him any cover. Another slug ricocheted off the rock with a wicked whine.

Luke hadn’t been expecting trouble, so he hadn’t been riding with his Winchester across his saddle’s pommel as he did when he knew hell might start to pop. Nor had he had time to drag it from its sheath as he was diving off the dun’s back.

That meant his only weapons were the twin Remington revolvers he carried in cross-draw holsters and a sheathed knife on his left hip, just behind the gun on that side. None of them were any good for distance work.

He thought back a few seconds to the moment when he had spotted a glint of reflected sunlight on top of a sandstone bluff in front of him. That warning had barely had time to register before the bullet buzzed past his ear.

The bluff was at least a hundred yards away. The Remingtons wouldn’t carry that far, not with any degree of accuracy, anyway.

Luke looked to his left. The dun had bolted off in that direction, spooked not so much by the gunfire as by Luke’s reaction to it. The horse, like Luke, was accustomed to violence. In one sense, they were partners in the bounty hunting business.

Another shot rang out in the hot, still air. It hit just in front of the rock and threw up a shower of dirt and grit that spilled over into Luke’s face. He lowered his head and muttered a curse as he blinked.

He had no idea who was trying to kill him or how he was going to get out of this.

A frown creased his forehead as a quick spattering of gunshots followed the latest crack of the rifle. Somebody else was horning in on this fight, which was fine with him. He could use the distraction.

He surged to his feet and ran toward the dun. No more slugs ripped the air around him. He grabbed the horn, went into the saddle in a hurry, and leaned forward over the horse’s neck to make himself a smaller target as he kicked it into a gallop.

A cloud of dust boiled into the air near the bluff ahead of him. It headed to his right, telling him that a group of men on horseback were fleeing in that direction. He hauled the dun’s head around and rode hard to intercept them.

The bluff hemmed them in. Luke caught sight of four or five men as their mounts raced through the chaparral along its base. More men rode along the top of the bluff and fired down at the fleeing riders.

The fugitives tried to veer away from the rise, but Luke had the angle on them from that direction. He had the dun’s reins in his left hand. He used his right to draw one of the Remingtons and thumbed off a pair of shots.

He didn’t hope to hit anything but rather to herd the riders back toward the bluff. So he was surprised when one of the men threw his arms in the air and pitched from the saddle in an obvious death sprawl.

Luke didn’t like killing a stranger when he didn’t even know the reason for it, but one of this bunch had been the rifleman who nearly put a bullet through his head, so he wasn’t going to lose a lot of sleep over it. He fired again.

Without any warning, the four men who still fled abruptly disappeared. Luke didn’t have any idea where they had gone until he drew closer and saw a dry wash twisting away across the West Texas landscape.

The wash gave them the cover they needed to get away from the men on top of the bluff. Those men reined in and continued firing rifles and handguns toward the arroyo, but they were shooting blind. The bluff was too steep here for them to get their horses down.

Luke thought about pursuing the men into the wash, but he decided there were too many places where they could stop and ambush him.

Instead, he turned his horse and rode toward the man he had shot, who still lay motionless on the ground where he had landed next to a scrubby mesquite bush.

As he brought the dun to a halt not far from the dead man, somebody hailed him from the top of the bluff.

“Stay right there, mister!” the man called, then disappeared as he turned his horse away from the rimrock.

Luke didn’t like being told what to do, but he was curious about what had happened here and waiting for the others to join him seemed like the quickest, easiest way to find out.

As long as they didn’t start taking potshots at him, too.

He swung down from the saddle and left the dun’s reins hanging. The man he had shot lay on his side in a pool of blood that the thirsty ground would soon soak up. Luke could see part of the hombre’s face as he approached. He slipped one of the Remingtons from its holster just in case, even though he was convinced the man wasn’t playing possum.

As a bounty hunter, Luke had seen more outlaws than he liked to think about. This man fit the type. He wore rough range clothes and had a beard-stubbled face that bore marks of dissolution. As far as Luke could remember, he had never seen the man before, either in person or as a likeness on a wanted poster.

The men in the second bunch must have found a way down off the bluff. Luke heard hoofbeats and looked up to see them riding toward him. He kept the Remington in his hand but let it hang beside his leg as they approached.

This group consisted of eight men. They reined in when they were about twenty feet away and watched Luke warily. One man walked his horse forward to close the gap between them. His hand rested on the butt of the gun holstered on his right hip.

Luke understood why they were being cautious. He was a stranger to them, and a heavily armed one, at that. Dressed in black from head to foot, his hat, clothes, and boots were covered with a layer of gray trail dust that showed he’d been traveling for quite a ways. His craggy face and dark, narrow mustache gave him a somewhat sinister air. He looked like a bad man to have for an enemy.

That much was true about him, anyway.

What didn’t show was the real nature of the man. Luke Jensen was a bounty hunter, a ruthless man-hunter, and a dangerous foe, no doubt about that. He was also a very well-read man who knew the classics, who enjoyed a fine cigar and a snifter of cognac, who was just as much at home in an opera house as he was in a trail town saloon. He carried the scars of a violent life on his body and the scars of a tragic past on his soul, although he wasn’t the sort to brood about either.

But none of the cowboys confronting him now with their guns ready for trouble knew about any of that, so he just gave their apparent leader a noncommittal nod and said, “Howdy.”

“You’re on MacCrae range, mister,” the man said. “Mind telling me who you are?”

“I assume you have a right to ask that question?”

The man grunted and said, “Damned right I do. I ramrod the crew. Name’s Gabe Pendleton. Now, I’ve told you who I am, so I’d appreciate it if you’d return the favor.”

Pendleton was a stocky man with a thatch of straw-like hair under his battered brown hat. His eyes were a washed-out blue, Luke noted, and at the moment were narrow with suspicion.

“I’m Luke Jensen,” Luke introduced himself. He was used to people asking him if he was related to Smoke Jensen, the famous gunfighter. As a matter of fact, he and Smoke were brothers, although Luke didn’t go out of his way to publicize that relationship.

He had made plenty of enemies of his own without having everybody with a grudge against his brother gunning for him, too.

“What are you doing here?”

“I was riding along minding my own business when somebody on top of that bluff started shooting at me. Whoever it was had me pinned down. Then you and your friends came along and rousted him out, and he and his friends lit a shuck. I owe you some thanks for that, by the way.” Luke shrugged. “Now you know as much about this dustup as I do. More, I would guess.”

Pendleton nodded toward the dead man and asked, “You know who that is?”

“I never saw him before,” Luke said.

“We don’t mean you any harm. How about pouching that iron?”

“I’d be glad to . . . as soon as you and these other men take your hands off your guns.”

Pendleton jerked his head in a command, and the other men relaxed and lifted hands from gun butts. Luke slid the Remington he held back into its holster.

Pendleton motioned to his men and said, “Take a look at that hombre and see if any of you know him.”

He dismounted, and the others followed suit and gathered around the corpse while Luke and Pendleton moved to one side. One of the cowboys said, “I think I’ve seen him before, Gabe, maybe in one of the saloons at Painted Post, but I don’t know his name.”

“His name don’t matter,” another man said. “All that counts is that he works for Harry Elston.”

Pendleton said, “We don’t know that for a fact.”

That brought a snort of disbelief from the man who had just spoken.

“Who else would be out here usin’ a runnin’ iron on our critters?” the man wanted to know.

Pendleton just grunted and didn’t have any other answer for the question.

A swift, sudden rataplan of hoofbeats would have kept him from replying, anyway. The sound made all the men look around, including Luke. He saw a single rider coming toward them on a big white horse.

“That looks like the boss,” one of the men said.

“Yeah,” Pendleton agreed. A nervous expression appeared on his face. The owner of this ranch must have been a real fire-breather to have that effect on the tough foreman, Luke thought. From everything he had heard about Sam MacCrae, that was the case.

But the newcomer wasn’t the old Scotsman, Luke realized a moment later. The rider’s faded blue shirt hugged curves that were undeniably female. Luke spotted long, black hair that was pulled back and tied in a ponytail that hung down the woman’s back. She wore a flat-crowned black hat with its neck strap tight under her chin.

When she reined her mount to a halt and swung down from the saddle, Luke saw that she wore a divided canvas riding skirt as well, which explained how she was able to ride astride the way she did. She led the horse toward them. She didn’t walk like a man, but there was nothing mincing or affected about her stride, either.

“I saw the branding fire, Gabe,” she said.

Pendleton nodded and said, “Yes, ma’am.” Luke noticed that the foreman had moved so that he stood between the woman and the man on the ground.

It didn’t do any good, because she asked, “Is that a dead man behind you?”

“Yes, ma’am, but you don’t want to be looking at him.”

“Is he one of our men, or one of the rustlers?”

“He’s not one of us,” Pendleton said.

“Let me have a look.”

Pendleton hesitated. Clearly, he didn’t want to expose her to the sight of a grisly corpse. Luke’s bullet had ripped through the man’s torso from side to side, and there was a lot of blood on the ground around him.

The woman wore a determined expression, though, so after a few seconds Pendleton gave a tiny shrug and stepped aside. The woman came forward a few steps to peer down at the dead man.

Her face went pale for a second under its healthy tan, but her expression remained steady and composed. She shook her head and said, “I don’t know him.”

“None of us do,” Pendleton told her, “although Chuck said he might’ve seen the man in one of the saloons in Painted Post.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. It’s the closest place for Harry Elston’s men to drink.”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

The woman turned her head to look at Luke. She said bluntly, “I don’t think I know you.”

“This fella is the one who downed that rustler,” Pendleton explained. “The way I figure it, a couple of them were working the branding fire while two more drove our steers up. They put one man up on top of the bluff to keep a lookout and make sure they weren’t disturbed. When Jensen here came along, the sentry got spooked and started shooting. The boys and I heard the shots and got here as quick as we could.”

“Mr. Jensen, is it?” the woman said to Luke.

“That’s right,” he said. “Luke Jensen.”

She wore riding gloves, but she used her left hand to pull the glove off her right and then stuck it out like a man.

“I’m Glory MacCrae,” she introduced herself.

Luke shook hands with her, and as he did he thought that she had just confirmed what he already suspected. She was the woman he had come here to find.

The woman who had a price on her head for murder.

It had started a few weeks earlier in San Antonio, where Luke had brought the body of an outlaw named Joe Jack Talcott. Luke had caught up to Talcott at a road ranch between Schulenberg and San Antonio and gotten the drop on him—or so he’d thought—while the outlaw was in bed with a soiled dove named Juanita.

What Luke didn’t find out until later was that Juanita’s brother, who was something of a desperado himself, had been gunned down by a bounty hunter a couple of years earlier, so when Talcott, with his hands up and his long underwear down, had paused in his cussing long enough to call Luke a no-good bounty hunter, Juanita had gone loco.

Practically spitting fire, she had rolled out of the sheets with a flash of sleek, golden-brown skin and grabbed a bottle of tequila from the little table beside the bed. She flung it at Luke’s head, and her aim was good. He had to throw his left arm up to block the bottle.

The next instant, Talcott crashed into him, desperation prompting the outlaw to try a diving tackle despite the fact that Luke’s gun was still pointed in his general direction.

The Remington had gone off as the collision drove Luke backwards off his feet, but the bullet missed Talcott and tore through the oilcloth shade over the room’s single window instead. Outside, it creased the rump of one of the horses tied at a hitch rack and set off an explosion of bucking and squealing that spooked the other mounts and made them jerk their reins loose and stampede away.

While that was going on, Luke was locked in a deadly struggle with Joe Jack Talcott. The outlaw got a hand on the barrel of Luke’s gun and tried to twist the weapon around so that it pointed at its owner. Luke resisted that effort. Juanita came up and tried to kick him in the head with a bare foot. Actually, she was bare all over, which was very evident from Luke’s vantage point on the floor, although he was in no position, physical or otherwise, to appreciate the view.

After jerking his head out of the way of Juanita’s foot a couple of times, he grabbed her ankle with his free hand and heaved. She went over backwards and landed hard enough on her rump to knock the breath out of her and take her out of the fight for the moment. Luke balled that hand into a fist and slammed it a couple of times into the side of Talcott’s head. The outlaw’s eyes glazed over. He lost his grip on Luke’s gun and Luke shoved him away.

Unfortunately, Talcott rolled within reach of his Colt, which rested in a holster attached to a shell belt hung over one of the posts at the foot of the bed. He regained his wits enough to make a grab for the gun, even though Luke yelled for him not to do it. The Colt slid out of leather and Talcott started to swing it up.

Luke shot him in the chest.

The Remington boomed three times and made Juanita scream and clap her hands over her ears. The first shot probably killed Talcott instantly, but Luke knew there was nothing worse than thinking some varmint was dead and then finding out that he wasn’t, so he put two more slugs into the outlaw, each within a few inches of the blood-pouring hole where the first bullet had struck him. With the Colt still in his hand, Talcott sagged sideways on the floor.

Luke pushed himself onto one knee, then onto his feet and took a step back so he could cover Talcott and Juanita at the same time. Neither appeared to be a threat anymore. Talcott was dead and Juanita was curled up in a ball, sobbing in fear.

The fella who ran the place came in the door with a shotgun. He was a fat, bald-headed gent named Edwards with a long gray beard that hung down over his chest. Luke was ready to shoot him, too, if need be, but Edwards quickly pointed the shotgun at the floor and backed off.

“Take it easy, mister,” he said in an urgent voice. “Just take it easy.”

After that it was just a matter of explaining everything and showing Edwards the wanted poster with Joe Jack Talcott’s picture on it. The proprietor insisted that he hadn’t known the man who had taken Juanita into one of the rooms was really a wanted killer. Luke didn’t know whether or not Edwards was telling the truth and didn’t really care one way or the other.

The only ones who were really upset were the men whose horses had run off, and after taking a look at Luke they appeared to decide it wasn’t worth raising a ruckus over.

All that was left was getting some clothes on Talcott’s corpse, throwing it over the saddle on his horse, lashing the dead outlaw in place, and taking him to San Antonio. The State of Texas had placed the bounty on Talcott’s head, so Luke figured the easiest way to collect would be to turn the body over to the Rangers.

That was how he came to find himself in the office of Major John B. Jones, the head of the Frontier Battalion.

The major didn’t seem to be overly fond of bounty hunters, but what Luke did for a living wasn’t illegal and there was a reward for Talcott, dead or alive, so Luke had $800 coming to him.

“Next time you should just take the body to the nearest undertaker and get a local lawman or other official to vouch for the fact that you brought him in,” Jones said. “You didn’t have to haul Talcott all the way here to San Antonio.”

“The place where I caught up with him was halfway between here and Schuelenberg,” Luke explained. “I thought I’d probably get my money faster if I brought him to you.”

Jones grunted and said, “The money’s all that matters to you, isn’t it?”

“Talcott’s killed three men in the commission of his crimes, that we know of,” Luke pointed out. “There’s a good chance he’s also the one who burned down that store in Hallettsville after it was robbed, and the bodies of two more men were found in the ashes. I’d say it’s a pretty good thing Talcott won’t be around to keep on robbing and killing, because I don’t think he planned on stopping anytime soon.”

The bearded ranger inclined his head in acknowledgment of Luke’s argument.

“I’ll have the voucher for your reward drawn up right away,” he said. “You can come back by the office and pick it up later this afternoon. Take it to any bank in San Antonio and they’ll honor it.”

“I’m obliged to you.” Luke nodded toward a stack of papers on Jones’s desk. “That looks like a bunch of new wanted posters.”

“Already thinking about where your next payoff is coming from, eh?” Jones shoved the reward dodgers toward Luke. “You can take a look at them, but don’t carry any of them off with you. My men haven’t even seen them yet.”

“Obliged again,” Luke said as he picked up the stack.

The first dozen posters he flipped th. . .